Before any European Championships or World Cup we Dutch ask for only two things: firstly, that our team plays good attacking football, and secondly, that Germany don't make it to the final. Since only one of our modest wishes was granted at Euro 2008, we'll have to derive some satisfaction from our own league this year. Luckily, it looks set to be compelling, not least because only five of 18 teams will be kicking off the season with the same manager that began the last campaign.

Most notably, Marco van Basten will make his debut as a club manager at Ajax while Steve McClaren arrives in Holland, seemingly under the impression that FC Twente are a clever way to rebuild his reputation after botching the England job. As is to be expected, the high turnover of managers led to a flurry of transfers, prudent and otherwise. And, as usual, much more talent flowed out rather than in.

It seems that nobody had told Van Basten that there was a transfer window in the winter too, leading him to buy just about every player he could get his hands on. The prolific Argentine striker Darío Cvitanich, the new ''most expensive player in Dutch football'' Miralem Sulejmani, the former PSV midfielder Ismael Aissati and the versatile Evander Sno will all be grazing on the lush Amsterdam Arena pasture this year.

But Van Basten's most curious signing was the Barcelona defender Oleguer Presas. What's confusing isn't so much that Van Basten bought him, but that there was a transfer at all. Oleguer is a staunch socialist who, one might presume, opposes the capitalist jungle of the modern transfer market. Yet Oleguer had been keen on this move. He had meshed well with Frank Rijkaard's laissez-faire approach in Barcelona but his new manager has a flair for despotism. The two should clash nicely.

Presas is the sixth Spaniard to join Ajax over the past three years. Yet the success of the full-back Gabri stands alone among the failures of Alberto Luque, Roger, Ismael Urzaiz and Juanfran. Presas is expected to fill the enormous Jaap Stam-shaped hole that's been gaping in defence since the latter retired last December - and this makes Ajax keen favorites to win the league. "Ajax will be champions with two fingers up their nose," said the former player turned television pundit Johan Derksen, his giant nostrils gaping invitingly.

Feyenoord have been quiet during the transfer window but should still improve on their sixth-place finish last season. That team, newly padded with a slew of current and former Holland internationals last summer, needed a little time to gel. Still, the new manager Gert-Jan Verbeek soon learned that the squad he inherited from Bert van Marwijk – who became Holland manager – was nowhere near as good as he'd expected and that there was no money for new players. He also lost much of the player-power he did have to a series of injuries ahead of last Saturday's Johan Cruyff Schaal match (the Dutch Community Shield) against PSV. In several cruel twists of fate, knees and ankles, no fewer than 12 of his finest underperformers had to watch the match from the stadium's wheelchair platform.

Moreover, Feyenoord's star striker Roy Makaay and the winger Jonathan de Guzman went to the Olympics to play for the Netherlands, although Feyenoord could have lawfully barred them from doing so. They didn't; and for their generosity they were thanked and told that they could Medivac their players home. De Guzman has a groin injury, while Makaay suffered a broken bone in his rather essential right foot and will be out for at least a month. Doctors had originally misdiagnosed Makaay's injury, leading him to play in Holland's group game against the United States and worsening his condition. "The medical staff of the Olympic team had said there was no risk, because nothing was damaged," Verbeek's teeth gnashed during an interview. "Now it turns out that they missed this."

After losing friendlies to Real Mallorca, Borussia Dortmund, Celtic and Benfica, Feyenoord thought that they had hit rock-bottom. But still they managed to drill a hole and sink even deeper when they lost 2-1 in a pre-season friendly to the amateur side BVV Barendrecht. This left them little hope against PSV who predictably beat them 2-0 in a drab match.

Afterwards Verbeek took his anger out on the pitch. "A match like this has to be taken seriously, which means that the pitch should be in order," Verbeek said. "The [FA] can't accept that the grass is this long."

As for McClaren, nobody seems to understand what he's doing here. The Voetbal International columnist Taco van den Velde even called his recruitment a "PR stunt", adding that the ambitious chairman Joop Munsterman had admitted that ''the club had especially wanted to attract a name".

"In other words, it had to be someone through whom the club could show off," van den Velde wrote. "Craftsmanship was secondary. If it ends in failure the outcome will be predictable: the English coach will be taken out with the garbage. McClaren won't be able to help it if he turns out to be the wrong man in the wrong place." Most of all, this is a lose-lose situation for McClaren. If he does the impossible and comes in fourth and makes the Champions League qualifier, which seems unlikely, he'll only have done as well as the last guy. If he doesn't, he'll return to England in need of a long shower and a new job.

But the potential story of the year is to be found down in the first division, where Marc Overmars will be making his comeback in professional football. Now 35 years old, he played his way to a contract on the strength of his performance in Jaap Stam's farewell match. Four years ago the bite-sized winger had to retire because of incessant knee trouble. Now he's back with Go Ahead Eagles, his first club, where he'll be looking to pick up where he left off – which is exactly what he did in his first match last week when it took him all of 30 minutes to injure himself. But as Van den Velde proselytised: "If his appearance this season becomes a huge success I'm afraid that'll say more about the level of our football than about Marc Overmars."

His dubious sales pitch shouldn't dissuade anyone from following the Dutch league this year; it should make for quite a spectacle - both on and off the pitch.